Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and director and producer Steven Spielberg are among six people set to receive Harvard University's highest honor in the field of African and African-American studies.
Harvard will honor its W.E.B. Du Bois medal winners at a ceremony Wednesday. The medals have been awarded since 2000.
Sotomayor is the first Latina to serve on the high court and speaks frequently of her upbringing, helping to influence and inspire children trying to succeed in the face of adversity, according to the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research, which presents the medals.
In addition to Spielberg's many filmmaking accomplishments, the center cited his establishment of a foundation to record oral histories of those who survived the Holocaust and other genocides. Another of his foundations, the Righteous Persons Foundation, provides grants to promote cooperation and cross-cultural understanding among ethnically and religiously diverse groups across America.
The medals will also be given to senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, playwright Tony Kushner, Georgia civil rights activist and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, and NBA Commissioner David Stern.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
